One of the five factors of influence (scarcity)

Examples of how your own behavior or that of another person has been influenced by one or more of the compliance tactics of social influence that can help identify the causes of individual behaviors as well as the causes of larger social problems.

Describe a social problem and describe how Cialdini's social influence findings might be used to address the problem. Also describe how your own behavior or that which you noted of another person might be altered in consideration of Cialdini's social influence findings.

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If one were to have no idea about psychology or persuasion it would be impossible based on social interaction for any person to deny the power of social influence. The question is; can the social compliance be measured, evaluated and used? The answer is a definitive and study based, yes.

One must first consider an actual social problem which existed because of prohibition; under the 18th amendment in 1919 as a prime example of how a social compliance tactics unwittingly caused a major problem which had far reaching effects in the United States. Consider this excerpt from Digital History at the University of Houston that states," Prior to prohibition in1919, a year before Prohibition went into effect, Cleveland had 1,200 legal bars. By 1923, the city had an estimated 3,000 illegal speakeasies, along with 10,000 stills. An estimated 30,000 city residents sold liquor during Prohibition, and another 100,000 made home brew or bathtub gin for themselves and friends. Obviously along with this increase in speakeasies came and increase in people ...

Solution Summary

...the "Principle of Scarcity" also applies to the way that information is evaluated. Research indicates that the act of limiting access to a message may cause individuals to want it more and to become increasingly favorable to it. The latter of these findings, that limited information is more persuasive--seems the most interesting. In the case of censorship, this effect occurs even when the message has not been received. Additionally, the scarcity principle is more likely to hold true under two optimizing conditions when scarce items are heightened in value when they are newly scarce. That is things have higher value when they have become recently restricted--more than those than those things that were restricted all along have. People are most attracted to scarce resources when they compete with others for them.